Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America (6 page)

“He’s spookier than I am,” Beck rejoiced.

On and on went prophecies of doom.

On his radio show, he likened the economic situation to a “doomsday device” that guaranteed massive retaliation in a nuclear strike. “Socialist policies have tricked this system into thinking that we have started a war,” he told listeners. “Economies are starting to crash.”

On a spring evening in May 2010, he likened the state of America to that of the
Titanic
, post-iceberg. “America, this is your third warning now that I’ve counted. This is the third time I’ve heard people say we’re just buying time,” he said. He told them of a quotation that “hungry people fighting over food don’t usually make real sound decisions,” and recommended, “You have to make yours now.”

“This ship, it’s sinking now,” he continued, explaining his own preparations for the end. “I’ve been eating fruit all day because I realized—I got news for you, man. A world without cupcakes, I’m dead within two hours. I got to get into shape.” He also advised viewers to “turn to God and live.”

But they apparently don’t have much time left to find God. “Is America going to survive?” he asked his viewers a month before offering them the
Titanic
analogy. “Or are we going to fundamentally transform into something that nobody can describe or identify?” The evidence, in Beck’s world, points to the latter outcome.

One night he told viewers that Iranian leaders “are telling their people that these are the End of Days, setting them up for something, and there is something about the Persian Gulf turning blood red, and that is now happening.”

The health-care bill, he said, “is the end of America as you know it.” The political system, he said, “is corrupt! And if we don’t fix it, we’re doomed.” As things stand now, he said, “We’re facing the destruction of our country in the next—I don’t even know—one year, five years, ten years. But it’s coming—on this course, it’s coming.”

For one show he even brought out a Jenga building set and began to play with it to illustrate how the system would collapse. “The game that we’re playing right now is, how many of these can be taken out?” he continued. “How many of these problems and solutions can you slide out before the whole darn thing collapses?” After he finished the game, he told viewers that “before you know it, the whole thing will collapse … It will collapse on you and your family.”

When Obama spoke about his cap-and-trade proposal for curbing greenhouse gases, Beck tore away papers pasted to his chalkboard. “You’re going to see a black and white world, man, that is nothing but destruction and ugly,” he forecast. “I don’t know why no one else will tell you the truth about all these things … It is only when you take down the mask of sunshine and lollipops that you will see the real thing, the real image: destruction!”

Even Beck had to realize the apocalypse thing was getting a bit too much. One night, after his doomsday talk was mocked by Stephen Colbert, Beck brought his own “fear consultant” onto the show.

“Now, I fully appreciate that you’re very worried about expanding government, Islamic fascism, the trampling of the Constitution, economic meltdown, socialistic policies, Mexico, North Korea, Pakistan, End Times, global unrest, Al Franken, street riots, cholesterol, salmon, yada yada,” the consultant said.

“I’m actually not trying to be alarming,” said Beck.

“No, you need to be more alarming, Glenn. Killer bees! … Black holes!”

Alas, there was no stopping the march to Armageddon:

“Your right to keep and bear arms is under attack.”

“Your freedom of speech is under attack.”

“Our freedom is under attack.”

“Our Constitution is under attack.”

“Families are under attack.”

“Religion is under attack.”

“Faith is under attack.”

“The entire system is under attack.”

“Talk radio is under attack.”

“Fox is under attack.”

“I’m under attack.”

“I think everybody is under attack.”

“We’re all under attack.”

“God is under attack.”

“We are under attack in almost every shape and form in America.”

Okay, Glenn. We got the idea.

“You know, I know we don’t know each other,” Beck told his viewers one night, “but I feel like I know you … I think you fear for our future.”

How couldn’t they? They’ve been watching Glenn Beck.

CHAPTER 5
CRAZY LIKE A FOX

Is Glenn Beck crazy?

The question has been answered in the affirmative by no less an authority than Glenn Beck. He did this while interviewing himself.

“There is a talk-radio host you may have heard of that many blogs around the country said was nearly driven to madness by a caller from Massachusetts, of all places,” Beck said on his TV show one evening. “Here he is.”

The picture switched to … Glenn Beck! In shirtsleeves, doing his radio show.

“Where is your logic?” a caller named Kathy is asking him. “What would you do? I’m asking you, what would you do to change this health-care system for the better? After all, every time you people bring up cost, you don’t care about the trillions of dollars to bail out the banks and all the credit card companies.”

At this, Beck explodes. “Kathy, get off my phone!” Beck is pumping his arms in the air maniacally. “Get off my phone, you little pinhead! I don’t care? You people don’t care about the trillions?” Beck slips into a high-pitched screech. “I’m going to lose my mind today,” he shrieks.

“That’s shameful,” the TV version of Beck said when the clip ended. Then, as he announced himself as his official guest, an image of the radio version of Beck appeared on the split screen, wearing a sweatshirt and a “TF” baseball cap for Bill O’Reilly’s show,
The Factor
.

“Thank you for finally having somebody who disagrees with you, you know, on the air once in a while,” Radio Beck told TV Beck.

“A lot of people say you’ve lost your mind,” TV Beck said to Radio Beck.

“You know, I have lost my mind,” Radio Beck said. “You know, what’s the difference between me and you, you know what I mean? I’ve lost my mind. You’re a big fat fatty. You’re on TV all the time. But yes, I lost my mind. You know, are you watching the news? … I mean, the whole country is melting down. People aren’t even paying attention.”

An understanding TV Beck replied, “And that’s why you were screaming ‘get off my phone’ to that lady because she wasn’t paying attention?”

“Yes,” Radio Beck volleyed. “I think yelling at people and then hanging up on them is the only real way to save America at this point … Doing that to one person every day—it’s not enough,” Radio Beck continued, explaining that yelling at people should be worked into one’s daily routine. “You know, people are picking up a newspaper … What, are you crazy? ‘Get out of my newspaper!’ ”

“You’re starting to sound a little nuts,” TV Beck informed his radio self.

“Oh, I’m starting to sound crazy?” Radio Beck asked, offended.

“Yeah, you are, just a little bit.”

“I knew you’d say that,” crazy Radio Beck replied. “The magic bean in my pocket told me you would say that. Oh, I know who you are.”

TV Beck moved to cut off the madman.

“Get off my screen, you pinhead!” Radio Beck shrieked.

It was pitch-perfect comedy, but the segment also said everything you need to know about Beck’s mental state. He may say and do crazy things, but that doesn’t mean he’s crazy.

There are millions of Americans who fear their government, which usually makes them angry at their government. In Beck, they found somebody who will give voice to their paranoia.

After Poland’s president was killed when his plane tried to land in fog in Russia, a caller to Beck’s radio show saw something darker. “Call me paranoid,” the caller said. (Okay, if you insist.) “I smell a rat in the destruction of the Polish government on that airplane.” The caller thought it might have been a plot by “the Ruskies.”

Beck allowed the man to spin the conspiracy theory, then validated it. “I don’t put anything past a former KGB agent,” he said. “We are dealing with the powers of darkness … I don’t know if anybody had anything to do with this physically, but I’m telling you we are dealing with the powers of darkness in the world today.”

But you don’t get three million viewers a night by merely validating existing paranoid delusions; you must also feed the paranoid new things to fret about. This is why Beck tells his viewers and listeners, day after day, that the government is out to get him.

“Even with all the resources of Fox, the truth still can’t be fully exposed without you. I ask you, please help us. Meet us here every day,” he urged his followers one evening in May 2009. Conspiratorially, he continued, warning about an unspecified “they” and “them”: “The status quo is what gives them their status. It is what brings them to power and self-importance. Use your voice while you still have it. I tell you, with everything in me, I think they are going to silence voices like mine and Bill O’Reilly and Rush and everybody else. They will silence us. They can’t let us continue to speak out. When the government is trying to influence what kind of syrup a restaurant uses, do you really think they’re going to have a problem regulating opinion?”

It was a dark and sinister plot Beck was outlining. But if he truly believed this, he recovered fairly quickly. A moment later, he was telling viewers, “You know what? We’re going to do some comedy on the road.” He directed them to his Web site for ticket information.

Months later, “they” weren’t merely trying to silence him. They were trying to kill him. One night in March 2010, Beck was on a familiar topic, the evils of “social justice,” when he argued that the Obama administration and its supporters had violated three of the Ten Commandments: stealing, coveting, and bearing false witness. “And for those of you in the administration who are coming after me on this one—I mean, remember, you’ve broken three, let’s not make it four. Thou shall not kill.”

In late May 2010, Beck appeared on Fox Business Network to speak about a plot by the White House and its allies that involved “targeting and destroying” him. “Isolate and destroy. That is their whole mantra. They tried to do it with Rush. They tried to do it with Fox. They’re just coming after me. They have been relentless. This kind of stuff is coming after me for over a year.”

The host, David Asman, was concerned. “Does it have any effect on you personally, emotionally?”

“No,” Beck said, before reconsidering. “When you have your children in jeopardy, which my children have been in jeopardy, when your family is under attack, when you have the death threats, when you can’t go anywhere without major security, because of these groups and what they say and how they distort and how they lie, yes, it affects somebody personally. You bet it does.”

But brave Beck said he would press on—“until my dying breath.”

The problem is, “they” are interested in killing more than just Glenn Beck. “They are building a machine that will crush the entrepreneurial spirit and the freedom that our Founding Fathers designed,” Beck warned another day. “This machine, whatever it is they are building, will crush it. Do not let them build another piece. So while I turn away, I want to make sure that I have at least ten million eyes watching—watching every single move they’re making.”

“They,” Beck said at another point, “will gather strength and you will not be able to stand against them … They’re going inside our government … These people are thugs … I fear that there will come a time when I cannot say things that I am currently saying.”

Beck frequently advises his viewers to fear home invasions. Sometimes these invasions come in the form of parenting advice. “You will have to shoot me in the forehead before I will let you into my house to tell me how to raise my children.” Sometimes they are to disarm the population: “You will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun.” Sometimes they are to silence dissent: “You will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and be silent.”

Even something as simple as a census questionnaire leads to a home invasion. Beck, refusing to fill out his census form completely, warned those census workers who might come to his door in search of the missing information: “Have a good time trying to get past the dogs and the gates. Enjoy that, enjoy that.” Laughing, he added: “I don’t suggest you climb over the walls. The dogs are really, really hungry. You’ve been warned. Don’t step on the property. Guard dogs—and other things.”

On the air, Beck fancies himself being stalked by those he targets on the show, including former White House adviser Van Jones (“If I’m found dead in the streets it’s either Van Jones or Imus,” he told radio host Don Imus), the voter registration organization ACORN (“If I’m ever in a weird accident or a suicide or something, after the media’s done celebrating, could they check into it?”), and the head of the service employees union (“I hope he doesn’t break my legs or have my legs broken”).

In the paranoid mind, enemies lurk in every nook and cranny. So, too, on
The Glenn Beck Show
.

One day, Beck informed his followers that he was being “targeted by those who are in the Oval Office with the president.”

Another day he said he expects “dogs and firehoses” to be used against him and his followers. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head.”

Another day, he said they were reading his e-mails. “I do believe the government could be reading mine,” he said. “During the Bush administration somebody told me, who would have access to know, I have a file. I can guarantee you I have got a file at least at the White House now.”

Terrorist watch list? Gitmo waiting list?

Even automotive safety has been seen as a possible vehicle with which big government could attack Beck. Take the “OnStar” system, which can remotely disable a stolen car’s engine. But when the government took ownership in General Motors, this technology acquired a sinister meaning. “Our government is starting to consume everything and control everything,” Beck told radio listeners. “Do you want the government to be able to know where you are in your car all the time, also be able to have a microphone in your car?”

On March 9, 2010, Beck had on his TV show the disgraced Democratic congressman Eric Massa, who had just resigned from Congress as allegations emerged of sexual advances he had made on male staffers. Ostensibly, Beck had Massa on to dish dirt on the Democrats, but instead the host wound up vying with his guest in a persecution contest. As Massa tried to outline his troubles, Beck broke in with “bullcrap, sir,” using an expression apparently exempt from the Mormon edict against profanity. “Listen to me … Do you realize my family is at stake? Do you realize—excuse me, sir.”

“So is mine,” Massa volleyed.

“Excuse me for a second, sir,” Beck continued. “My family is at stake. You’ve got a little scandal with your children in college. I’ve got one for all time now, because I’m not going to resign. I’m not going to back down. I have come to a place where I believe, at some point, the system will destroy me.”

If anything’s going to destroy Beck, it’s his own mouth. But it’s more mysterious to say it will be the “system.” Which “they” operate.

Of course, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean “they” aren’t out to get you. When a collection of liberal groups gained some traction in their effort to persuade advertisers to drop Beck because he called Obama a racist, Beck saw in it another conspiracy.

“Has someone decided that they must destroy my career and silence me because we’ve stumbled onto something?” he asked. “Has there ever been a case in American history, outside of the hard-core radical progressive Woodrow Wilson, where an American president and administration tried to destroy the livelihood of a private citizen with whom they disagree? Can’t think of any.”

Beck argued that this is “the same thing” as Nixon’s enemies list, and likened it to Nazis rounding up Jews, citing, as he often does, Martin Niemöller’s description of the Gestapo: “First, they came for the socialists …” Asked Beck: “What is that poem? First they came for the Jews and I stayed silent?”

There’s “they” again. And Beck, German by ethnicity, likes playing the Jew in this scenario. “There is going to be a witch hunt—I believe, in this country, and possibly around the world—for two groups,” he informed his audience another day. “The first group, Jews—it happens every time. Second group, I think, conservatives.”

So if you believe “they” in the government are trying to silence if not kill you, it would be quite understandable to be upset about it. This is where Beck acknowledges he does “have something in common” with Howard Beale, the unstable anchorman from the 1976 film
Network
who tells viewers the world is falling apart and urges them: “Get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ ”

“That’s the way I feel,” Beck told his Fox viewers. “I do wonder every night why you are not out your window just crying out and saying I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Beck finds it inexplicable that people might interpret such actions as a sign of mental-health problems. “The media seems to be painting a picture of anyone who is worried enough to prepare for the future as crazy. Call them crazy. I’m crazy. You’re crazy. We’re all crazy together,” he went on. “People now—starting in the media—tell you, ‘Oh, you can’t trust that Glenn Beck, he’s crazy,’ or I have something to gain, or I’m just a Republican hack in disguise. The obvious insinuation is—if you’re watching this television show every night—you’re one of those three as well.”